Michael Brownrigg, city council member in Burlingame, CA, a small neighbor of San Francisco, has 3 friends that died from brain cancer. He wanted to learn more about cell phones and brain cancer and the Mayor agreed to a presentation last evening.

The San Francisco Department of Environment made an excellent presentation with the help of the Environmental Working Group and the Environmental Health Trust. In fairness the CTIA, the wireless association, was allowed to present also. They sent a top V.P. from Washington D.C., Dane Snowden, who we had the "pleasure" of meeting in Maine last March and Dr. Ory, who was also in Maine. Another CTIA V.P., Mr. Keegan, was present but did not speak. We heard enough of him in San Francisco!

I am attaching the video – this should be of great interest to anyone who uses a cell phone or cares about democracy. Considering cell phones are ubiquitous this is an incredible piece and should be on 60 minutes. The cell phone presentation starts 32 minutes into the video. We consider this a victory for the good guys!

I was the last to speak. Unfortunately Mr. Snowden lost his composure after I spoke. I will wear that as a badge of honor.

I do hope you will consider watching this. Many of us are putting so much effort into this to save you and yours from the suffering so many are already enduring. Here is the link:

For those of you in the Bay area we have many exciting events on the horizon.

"Disconnect- the truth behind cell phone radiation, what the industry has done to hide it and how to protect your family" by Devra Davis is being released by Penguin this week! She has dedicated the book to several victims, including Alan.

October 2 at 2 p.m: Planning party at private home in Berkeley

Oct. 5-8: Peaceful demonstration outside Moscone Center as CTIA holds their last convention in San Francisco. Not only are they suing the city over the but they have pulled future conventions!

October 6, noon Devra Davis speaking at Commonwealth Club in San Francisco at noon- tickets can be purchased online (I will be speaking with her for a few minutes)

October 6, 6pm: Dinner and press conference with victims from across the nation, legislators, and experts

October 7, 6:30 pm: Cocktail party at private home in Marin with Devra Davis and state Senator Mark Leno, a proponent of cell phone legislation

October 11, 7pm: Berkeley Jewish Community Center Panel discussion – Lloyd Morgan, Devra Davis and I will speak on many aspects of this issue

For those of you who are local we truly need your help. We do this work for you. Please call me (925-285-5437) or email me for further details as to addresses, etc.

Please plan on attending some of the events and helping with the planning party and a short shift at Moscone Center. Bring the family- we will have fun!

The October-December 2010 issue of Reviews on Environmental Health will carry this article by Cindy Sage, MA, Sage Associates, and co-editor of the BioInitiative Report. It is a perspective on the need to recognize "the air as commons". It addresses our diminishing capacity to deploy unlimited radiofrequency and microwave radiation burden into the environment. What is 'the wireless commons'? Who owns it? Who is monitoring it's carrying capacity, and who is preventing overuse with respect to public health and environmental impacts?

(Excerpts)

Tragedy of the Commons Revisited: The New Wireless Commons

In 1968, Garrett Hardin, an eminent population ecologist from Santa Barbara, CA published an article in Science titled 'Tragedy of the Commons' (1). It was immediately hailed as a landmark piece of thinking. It reshaped prevailing views about our place in the ecological network of the planet. It was pivotal in defining how pursuit of our individual actions to maximize self-interest will, across populations all doing the same thing, result in diminished and overused environmental resources.

Hardin focused our attention like never before on three things. Resources are finite. The actions of each of us, acting in our own self-interest, collectively degrades and depletes them over the long-term. And, the inevitable result is diminished quality of life. He saw that where individuals seek to maximize their own use of finite resources at the expense of the common good (i.e. the commons) it's at the expense of everyone's ultimate self-interest to do so.

Before sustainability was a even buzzword, Hardin created a way of seeing the world that emphasized how individuals must learn to recognize and to act with more in mind than squeezing one more cow onto the common pasture. He gave us new ways to think about how we might better manage our resources in the face of new technologies. He was not a believer in the technological fix. Those lessons are highly relevant today.

'The Air as Commons' and Wireless Technologies

Where wireless is concerned, the new 'commons' is the air all around us. The air is habitat and it is an essential part of our common heritage. Decades of traditional air pollution control efforts have validated the need to protect this 'commons of the air' from chemical and particulate contaminants (2). Today, the new threat is emissions from wireless technologies.

All wireless technologies impact this 'commons' and every one adds to the burden of radiofrequency and microwave radiation that is transmitted through the air, into buildings and into all living things. Wireless transmissions drive electromagnetic energy through our air, into and through virtually all indoor and outdoor living environments. The protective air cushion around our planet holds breathable air, buffers us from space radiation, and supports and sustains life in tandem with the natural electromagnetic signature of the earth itself. We are changing this 'commons of the air' in major ways. Wireless signals from broadcast and communications technologies are crowding out and overpowering the natural background. The 'commons of the air' is being altered in unprecedented ways that have enormous consequences for life on earth.

Who owns the air habitat – the new 'commons'? Who should be allowed to pollute it? What are the limits? On what basis should carrying capacity be defined? Who defines the limits? Do these limits conserve the resource for the future? Do they protect public health and welfare, and the health and well-being of other living things on earth? Who bears the burden of proof of safety or of harm? How should the 'new commons' be managed for the greater good? Do we know enough to act responsibly? Who decides? When should limits be placed on utilization?

Societies must now define carrying capacity for chronic electromagnetic and wireless exposures. Taking into account there is large individual variability to withstand it, new limits must conserve and sustain the 'commons of the air' so that is sustainable for all – and this includes sensitive populations, the young, the elderly, and those with existing sensitivity.

Below is the link for the information on the current RF study at NIEHS. I want to point out a few flaws of the study -

The exposure parameters being used in these studies will place the subjects in RF chambers. In my non professional opinion, this will tell more about our ambient RF exposure than it will about holding RF devices to our heads, which is what the Reps and aides on the Hill thought the study was about when I met with them earlier this year.

The rats and mice will only have ten hours of exposure a day and this does not reflect the 24/7 exposure that many of us find ourselves experiencing.

The study is using 900 megahertz and 1900 megahertz while WiFi and 4G smart phone systems operate at 2.5 gigahertz and higher.

These flaws will probably lead to the same old criticism from industry - that the study exposures are not comparable to our exposures to RF and therefore any results from the study will not be valid.

The studies at the National Toxicology Program have in fact started. Our studies are designed specifically to mimic the human exposure scenario. The NTP studies are looking at exposures for 10 hours a day. There's heavy cell phone users that may approach the 10 hour mark - that may be excessive, but it allows us to fully investigate whether or not there is an effect of cell phone frequency radiation.

Our studies are designed to look at the frequencies that are currenly in use in the United States centering around 900 megahertz and 1900 megahertz, as well as the two modulations that are currently in use in the US, which are CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) and GSM ( Global System for Mobile communications). ... There's been a lot of leg work leading up to the exposure studies. We've pulled together some of the world's experts on radio frequency radiation. We've specially designed chambers to expose the animals in. Engineers from NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, have come in to validate the chambers. So, we have third-party validation of the exposures. Additionally, there was a lot of architectural construction that needed to be done at the lab - these chambers are rather large. And they had to be shipped from where they were constructed and designed in Switzerland to our laboratory in Chicago, Illinois. ... We estimate that we should have final results from these studies in 2014. We'll have some interim data available towards the end of 2010/beginning of 2011. .

WEEP News

by: Martin Weatherall

As a Canadian independent foundation, WEEP acts as an umbrella organization and focuses on progressive initiatives that bring increased awareness, policy change, and entrepreneurial activity around the issues of safe Electro Magnetic emissions.

WEEP News is a service provided by WEEP to keep those interested in and affected by Wireless, Electric, & Electromagnetic Pollution, informed on a daily basis, of all the current issues and initiatives in the world today.